In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist (31 page)

Nissim’s head jerked a little. He looked at Isaac. Then he nodded, as if to himself. “Good night, Reb Isaac,” he said softly.

“Good night.”

Isaac rolled an old blanket under his head for a pillow. Just when he thought the cell would settle down for the night, he heard an Arab voice call out from the other cell, “
Ya’allah!
Tonight we make
intafada!
Tonight the
hanjar
comes out!”

“Boo hoo hoo, little Indians,” a few of the Jews shouted back. “We will make Picassos all over your face!”

Each curse and threat sent the two factions into wall kicking, shouting and shrieking whistles. Still, there was restraint, Isaac allowed. No one cursed Mohammad or Moses, the Torah or the Koran. He tried not to scratch a psoriasis patch on his calf. He discarded his makeshift pillow and bunched his jacket under his head. At last, the men’s voices went hoarse from cursing. They fell asleep. The yellow lightbulb above shone like the jaundiced eye of Satan.

He lay on his side in a fetal position, a hand over his nose, trying to curl into himself. Still, he couldn’t block out the fetid smells, the flies buzzing around his ankles and wrists. All his life he had treaded carefully, avoiding trouble. And yet look how life had conspired to bring him here. All forces were collaborating against him—the judicial system, the police, the media—in a systemic betrayal of Yiddishkeit. He burned with fury at the commander, but his rage soon gave way to fear—not for himself, though. He lay on his hard, thin bunk bed, facing the wall, and a single word took shape in his mind:
Mustafa
. The custodian’s life was in great danger. He would surely be seen as a traitor by his own people. Isaac bent his body into a tighter knot and quietly moaned Mustafa’s name.

Someone the next cell over persisted in rattling a plastic bag. There would be no sleep tonight. Tamar. What would she think if she saw him now? He smelled his own breath, looked down at his bedraggled clothes. Dirty, smelly, and here he was, stripped of dignity, crushed by Shani. Helpless. Frozen. Utterly constricted.
Tamar, get me out of here
, he silently groaned. And he didn’t just mean prison.

But he had no idea how she felt. Not now.

He heard a man whimpering in his sleep. It was Tommy the Penitent. Isaac could see only the curve of his back, but even that looked anguished. In his sleep, he let out a garbled, “Turn off the light,” and shifted the position of his legs. A minute passed and he moaned, “I’m going to burn in hell.” Two minutes elapsed, and Isaac thought the night-muttering had ended, but then the poor man started up all over again.

Isaac stared up at the yellow bulb. Maybe he could wrap his jacket around the bulb, then decided no, it was too high up.

Just then, Tommy sneezed in his sleep, reached for his nose, and reflexively wiped his open palm on the wall. (Now Isaac knew what the dried stuff there was.) Isaac got out of his bunk, groped in his jail bag and found a packet of tissues Shaindel Bracha had packed. He placed it gently next to Tommy and returned to his place. Something.

An image of Shaindel Bracha came to him, her white ethereal skin and her plump cheeks, her small busy hands. She would do fine in the courtyard. No doubt about it. She was a holy fixer. It struck him then: Should such a woman be concealed in the kitchen? No and no. Here, too, was another injustice. Even if she preferred it that way.

Thoughts tumbled in and out of his brain. He couldn’t sleep and soon dawn would come. He kept rehashing the past twenty hours. And he started to wonder: Why
had
he been in such a rush to contact the press? It really might have led to dangerous things. For the first time he saw a glimmering of Commander Shani’s point of view. He knew why he had done it, though, what pushed him over the edge. He closed his eyes, and there in the black of his mind, a pomegranate shot through the dark. The rebbe once said, “Follow the pomegranate.” His last words. And Isaac followed it, and it led him here, to this place.

He rubbed at his eyes and wondered then: Could the rebbe have wanted him in jail? He stared at the bright yellow light that gave no relief.
What sense was there in that? Needless suffering.

Alone on his thin foam mattress, he asked out loud, “Why, Rebbe?”

Then he fell asleep.

Mustafa wandered outside, passing a Jewish bakery, a bank, and a pizza store, searching for Tamar. An old man in a bamboo rocking chair sat in the doorway of a religious articles shop, staring out so sternly it was clear to Mustafa that he couldn’t see. Mustafa walked down the winding staircase, stopping briefly at the second tier where a sign proclaimed
BEIT MEDRASH
and a huge round window displayed students of the Torah swaying over their books. Just like in the
madrassa
in his village. When he passed a checkpoint and the reserve soldiers searched inside his bag, he thought he might as well turn himself in. He opened his mouth but said nothing and walked down the steps. He leaned against a palm tree and held out his two hands. “Oh, Rabbi, why did I have to meet you?”

Every time a girl walked by in a long skirt, his eyes followed her and passed on to the next girl. So many girls—too many, walking quickly to their Jew wall, or leaving it reluctantly, each gripping her small prayer book as if it were a wallet with a great deal of money inside. His neck ached as it jerked this way and that, while his eyes tried to catch all them. None of them with hair the color of Miss Tamar’s.

Soon she would have to show up, he told himself. He knew she prayed there often, maybe even every day. She would tell him everything, he’d force her, by whatever power he could. But the afternoon passed. He waited and waited. A life spent waiting, he despaired. He was dead if she didn’t appear. Less than dead. No one was lower than he. Allah, have mercy. On himself and Miss Tamar, too. He didn’t want to hurt her if he didn’t have to.

The next day after work, he spread out his empty rucksack on the hot, white plaza stones a hundred yards from the Jew wall, and sat cross-legged under a palm tree, his tools resting at his side. He took out a long loaf of
bread, cut off a slice at the end and carved out the doughy insides. The spongy insides he ate immediately. These went easily down his throat. Then he poured
labana
down the bread cavity and packed in the soft white cheese with the wooden back of his knife. He sprinkled
za’atar
inside and slowly ate his way down the loaf. He tried to make his lunch take forever, and for him it was easy since he could never eat too fast or he would choke on the food. He set the loaf down in his lap and looked around, trying to make his gaze look as stupid and bored as could be. No soldiers stopped to question the
moak
Arab worker eating his lunch.

He got up to stretch his aching, knobby legs. An hour had passed, the loaf was finished, and each of his fingers cleaned and thoroughly wiped. How much longer could he stay here and wait? He heard the snort of an Egged bus passing under the Dung Gate arch, and he looked up to catch the next batch of tourists and worshippers exiting the bus. There was Miss Tamar, her motorcycle trailing the bus! Now she was taking off her white helmet, brushing her fiery hair out of her eyes. Ah, Allah hadn’t forgotten him after all. He watched her dismount, show her purse to a different set of soldiers, and pass through the turnstiles. He gathered up his tools and rushed over, scraping his exposed toe against a stone curb. Okh! The hole was getting bigger and bigger. What shoemaker could ever fix it now?

She saw him. She was coming toward him. “Mustafa!”

Her morning freckled cheeks made him smile, but then: A Jew is a Jew, he said to himself.

“What’s wrong with your face?” she said. “You look different.”

“Praise be to Allah, I found you.” Already he was gesturing with his tools toward the top stairs, toward the souk. “What’s happening to Rabbi Isaac? Tell me! I have to know.”

“Sure, I need to talk to you, too,” she said, following him up the steps, as the other Jews streamed downward toward their wall. “But why are we going up here?”

“We have to be careful,” he insisted, clenching his pronger. “Maybe soldiers are listening.”

“You look different, your whole face.” Her eyes swept over him. “Anyway, I’m glad you found me because we really should speak.”

They stood at the top landing, just under the arch that opened to the souk, and there he rested his tools. “Miss Tamar,” he said, his voice blunt
and hard. “Will the police take away my job and put me in jail?”

She glanced down. “Why are you squeezing my wrist?” She grimaced and tried to tug her hand away.

He looked at her through dark, sullen eyes, and released her wrist.

“Now just be quiet and listen to me,” she said, rubbing her wrist.

“No, you be quiet!” he shouted. “You listen to me!” He held up his pronger. Her scared face loomed pale underneath.

“Mustafa!” she gasped. Her big green eyes went over his face, looking and looking. “Would you hurt me?”

He squeezed the pronger. “They will take my job!”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re scared. I understand. But you know who else I’m scared for?”

He said nothing.

“Your friend. Isaac,” she said. “He’s in jail and he’s refusing to tell them anything about you.”

He stared at her. A jerk, a jolt. “What did you say?”

“He’s taking full responsibility—he won’t say a word.”

“This is true?” he asked, white-faced. He almost took up her hand again, but he stopped midair.

“Of course,” she said simply. “Isaac would never say anything to harm you.”

He shook his head. “No! It can’t be. Maybe it’s lies.”

“Really? Then why haven’t the police come to arrest you?”

Here, he had no words left. He lowered himself onto a stoop. He stared down at his fingers. He pressed his palms to his eyes. “Rabbi Isaac has said nothing!”

A lady pushed a stroller against his pronger, and it rolled a few meters away. He paid no attention. All the mean thoughts tearing through his mind came to a halt—one, two, three—just like that. His eyes raked her face to see what he might find. “How is he?”

“I hear he’s being treated like an animal,” she said bitterly. “Worse than a criminal. Not even allowed a toilet.”

These words cut into his skin. “Oh, Miss Tamar. That should be me in jail. Not the good rabbi,” he said brokenly. “I brought him trouble. But here”—he wiped his eyes with the butt of his wrist—“he protects me.”

Tamar put her head close to his. “You saved the pomegranate, though
you didn’t have to. You did what you knew was right.” Her eyes wouldn’t let go of his. “You collected more things even though it was dangerous, even though it goes against your whole way of life. How could he not protect you?”

At these generous words, he burst into tears. He had misled them, not once, not twice, but many times, pretending to be an Arab man of honor. Even today, he had come here prepared to hurt. Mustafa lifted an arm against her gaze.

“Don’t be sad.” She hovered close, to his left, to his right, unsure how to catch his gaze.

He glanced and saw a welt on her wrist where he had grabbed her. He had done this.

“You don’t know anything,” he cried out, and he got to his feet and staggered off, his tools abandoned.

Dazed, he stumbled down the stairs toward the plaza. A dark-coated, fur-hatted Jew was snapping a picture of a little girl next to a palm tree. A beggar, his head swathed in rags, was eating a falafel, bits of cucumber falling out of the pita’s corners. He looked askance as Mustafa lumbered by. A dark-skinned woman was crying out, “The Messiah will come today, if but you would listen to God.” The Jews, the Jews. They were all around him, everywhere he turned. They meant nothing to him, and he was nothing, no more than a flea to them. And yet, Rabbi Isaac cared for him, was protecting him. The sun threw an arm of light across the stone plaza and he walked along, mindlessly following it. An anguish filled his soul, and a strange joy, too. The rabbi had put himself in danger because of him, Mustafa the janitor.

His neck pulsed and throbbed as he followed the shaft of sunlight. Did he ever get protection like that before? Not even from his own mother. Mustafa knew she never loved him from the very start of his life. But now he wondered if it all had changed, if maybe Rabbi Isaac loved him very much, and even Miss Tamar, too, might love him a little.

He lifted his eyes, distracted by the call of the muezzin. Jews were standing and moving all around him as he lurched toward the Jew wall. A guard with a face like an elf extended toward him a black paper Jew’s cap, then glancing at him, quickly withdrew the offer. Mustafa stopped in front of the large-stoned Jew wall, such a hard, broken wall with no charm
or beauty at all. The Jews were calling out sounds, “
Yisgadal ve’yiskadash shmei rabbah!
” and they all answered a thundering ameen. The sounds swelled and lifted, high and then higher. He knelt down and lay with his cheek on the ground. “Mother,” he murmured. Oma.

He straightened, and blood rushed to his head, making him dizzy. Still on his knees, he made a cross over his breastbone. “ ‘I will bless you and keep you and shine my face on you,’ ” he shouted. “Allahu Akbar!” he cried. “Mother Maryam, most beautiful lady!”

There was a sudden roaring all around him.

“Get up, you crazy man!” someone shouted.

“A desecration,” screeched an old man in baggy shorts.

Mustafa from, his kneeling position, stared at the old man’s white bony knees. An Israeli teenage boy came toward him, two rock fists raised in the air. Mustafa reached for his tools and remembered he had left them behind. He turned, and squinting into the light saw a young woman with hair the color of paprika—Miss Tamar!—fending off the elf guard. She rushed into the men’s section, past a wooden table piled high with books, straight to him.

“He means no harm,” she shouted to the worshippers who stood in a jagged circle around Mustafa. “He’s a little—” she made fast circles around her ear. She said fiercely to Mustafa, “Dear God, let me get you out of here.”